Progress of Small French Colony

Wallis Island

Progress of Small French Colony in Central Pacific

From Our Own Correspondent.

APIA, July 24.

RECENT visitors who returned to Apia after a trip to Wallis Island, probably the smallest French Colony, established as such since 1917, tell some interesting news of the little known and rarely visited island, which lies away from the trade routes of the Pacific.

The 4,500 dusky inhabitants of Wallis (or Uvea Island) are ruled by a French Resident Agent, with only one other French official to assist him. There is one European trader and three white Roman Catholic missionaries resident on Wallis.

The natives are all Catholics and there is a large Roman Catholic Seminary where native priests are trained for the whole of the South Pacific.

The present French Resident Agent is a medical man, Dr. David, who takes a deep interest in the natives entrusted to his care. He has built a new hospital and numerous dispensaries around the island and has succeeded in considerably improv ing sanitation and the general state of health of the natives, who were previously suffering from skin diseases.

When the price of copra, the main pro duct of the island, dropped down, Dr. David, seeking some other source of revenue for the natives, introduced the ricinus (castor oil) plant to Wallis, which took on well and recently the first nine tons of castor oil seed were exported.

Rev. A. H. Scriven, a former missionary in Papua, sailed from Sydney by the Malaita for Solomon Islands on July 13.

He is now general secretary of the Methodist Mission Society of New Zeal and and will inspect all mission stations in the group, returning to New Zealand at the end of the year.